Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd give a non-programmer?

Re:Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd gi... by riffraff on Monday January 15, 2024 @02:17AM (#38998222)

What would be the proper resources to learn how to use excel (or Google sheets or other spreadsheet)?

I feel the major issue with excel (and other stuff such as CSS) is that one learns by cobbling things together and never through a formal process.

This means you end up inventing things that kinda work but you often don't use the tool the way it was intended.

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Re:Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd gi... by Falmarri on Monday January 15, 2024 @02:24AM (#38998247)

>I feel the major issue with excel (and other stuff such as CSS) is that one learns by cobbling things together and never through a formal process.

This is literally all programming, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. As long as you keep learning and don't just keep doing the same cobbled together mess for years and years

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Re:Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd gi... by riffraff on Monday January 15, 2024 @04:25AM (#38998862)

I disagree, in my experience most people I know who learned ruby, python, java, C or other programming languages went through some book or tutorial.

Many of the people who write CSS or use Excel have never read a book about CSS or Excel.

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Re:Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd gi... by spiffytech on Monday January 15, 2024 @11:20AM (#39002538)

Joel Spolsky gave a famous talk with a rot of tips, "You stuck at Excel": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

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Re:Ask HN: What would be the single piece of advice you'd gi... by riffraff on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @02:57AM (#39010657)

thanks!

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